I want to share a quote I’ve seen several times this past year:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
I thought was odd that we would be afraid of our own power. But if you think about it, that is what we are afraid of. It made me wonder – Why?
I read some opinions that said that if we believe we are powerful, then we feel responsible to step forward and serve the world. But then when we put ourselves out there we open ourselves up to ridicule, critique, questioning and possibly failure. There is the possibility that the power we felt within ourselves can be taken away. So in order to protect our power, we hide it – we play it safe by playing small.
When we play it safe, we wait for the right moment to let ourselves shine but those moments don’t come often, if at all.
For myself whenever I consider backing off and playing it safe – like every week when I write these articles about empowering women – I examine my perspective. It is the perspective I have been taught that makes me want to play it safe. Marianne said “There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” What she is saying is that we are taught to believe that if we are powerful, then we diminish or disempower others. That however, is a Blue Zone perspective – a perspective based in male traits.
When I want to feel powerful, confident and shine, I reject this male perspective in favor of my natural female perspective.
As women we don’t believe in the male hierarchal perspective that says there is a fixed quantity of power and for one person to rise up another must be diminished. We don’t believe that to be powerful, brilliant, gorgeous, talented or fabulous we have to take those qualities from others. Instead we know these qualities originate from within ourselves and we project them outward as an expression of who we are. So when we express our power we are saying “This is how I shine.” And it makes us look around to others and say “Tell me how you shine.”
To keep our female power, we must keep our female circular perspective. When we see people in a circle, we recognize each person as an equal individual and value them for who they are. Each person is a vital piece contributing to the whole. It allows us to say “This is who I am” without impacting other people – we only impact the sum of the whole. When we keep this perspective, it encourages other people to do the same. In a circle everyone can express who they are without taking anything away from who anyone is.
I think of a circle as a container. Each person adds to the whole and each person’s contribution of themselves only increases how much the circle contains. So as we express ourselves, we don’t feel our energy dissipate or be consumed. Our power isn’t attacked with ridicule and criticism. Our energy is captured and interacts with the energy of others. This is why when women gather in circles they get to experience their own inherent power.
Contrast our female perspective to how we have been taught to think about our personal power. The hierarchal male perspective we were taught doesn’t have a mechanism to collect and contain everyone’s power. It is about competition of individuals – winners and losers; givers and takers; risers and fallers.
So then, why aren’t we taught to think through a circular perspective? Because it doesn’t produce the individual heroes the male hierarchy promises us. We have subordinated the collective energy of many in order to pursue the dream of the ideal individual who is as powerful as the collective many. When we hold ourselves back and play it safe we are hoping there is superhero out there who is stronger, more powerful and better in every way than us. But there isn’t. There are only lots and lots of other ordinary people just like us.
We always have a choice in our perspective. We can choose to play it small and wait for the elusive ultimate hero or we can step forward with our shining powerful selves encouraging others to join us. Every week as I write these articles I am embracing my female circular perspective and inviting other women to join me in allowing themselves to shine in hope of creating a great big circle with boundless amounts of both male and female energy. This is what the world needs.
Our workplaces and communities need powerful women – women who retain and act from our circular perspective. My hope for the coming year is that women learn to no longer play it small and begin to embrace their inherent feminine power.
Empowered Women Aren’t Afraid to Shine
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